Analogies, valid and invalid (was Re: Scenario of language replacement)

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

>I've heard counterarguments like Arun Gupta's repeatedly, but
>they always overlook a glaring problem. Indo-European languages
.....
>Anatolia, Greece, and the Italian peninsula. The Indian problem
>is not as unique as chauvinistic writers make it out to be.

Alas, here we go again. I daresay Arun Gupta can respond to this himself,
but I need to make certain points here, as the points he raised struck me as
curious too. This post is addressed to all those who agree with Steve
Farmer's comments quoted above.

1. Just as "Western Indologists" do not all want to be clubbed together into
one stereotypical category, "Indian amateurs" do not want to be stereotyped
either. To make a comment about the analogies used by Parpola (and by most
everybody else in "mainstream" academia) is not to be chauvinistic about
India. Every once in a while, can we just discuss issues, instead of
attitudes?

2. Those list members who are interested in Indian philosophical thought may
appreciate the following. Some schools of thought accept perception
(pratyaksha), inference (anumAna), analogy (upamAna), postulation
(arthApatti), non-being/non-availability (abhAva/anupalabdhi) and testimony
(Sabda) as valid sources of gaining knowledge. Other schools, e.g. the nyAya
school of logic, accept only three, perception, inference and testimony,
taking the others to be special cases of inferential argument. In the nyAya
structure of valid logical argument, analogy does find a role, through the
example (d.r.s.tAnta) that needs to be cited to make the argument complete.
If the example does not satisfy the conditions of the propostion sought to
be proved, the argument is invalid.

3. In modern science, analogy plays an important role. When people first
discovered that electricity can flow, they tried to understand it through
analogy with fluid flow. It succeeded quite well, at least with respect to
Newtonian fluids and current through a simple ohmic resistor. Electric
current was analogous to flow rate and voltage was analogous to pressure
drop. It succeeded so well that today students first learn about electricity
and when they come to learn about fluid flow, they are taught to first think
of it in terms of electric flow. When we model new things based on our
knowledge of previously known things, we look for at least a few points of
similarity. If we can't find them, we reject the proposed model and look for
better models. All this is simply to say that although Aristotleian logic
does not put much emphasis on the validity of analogy, human beings look for
existing examples of something similar when trying to understand a new
phenomenon. If the analogy fails on certain counts, our understanding of the
new phenomenon correspondingly fails or remains faulty, till something else
happens to improve the state of knowledge.

4. From the perspective of standard patterns of Indian thought, and from the
perspective of modern patterns of scientific thought, the analogies cited by
Prof. Parpola fail on all the counts cited by Arun Gupta. The reason they
fail is that one cannot substitute the word "migration" for "invasion" and
then proceed to cite examples where linguistic change took place because of
naked aggression. If the idea is to retain the model of linguistic change
implied by the Spanish and Portuguese presence in south America or the
English presence in India, then call a spade a spade and assert boldly that
there was an Aryan invasion of the Indian subcontinent. Indian scientists
and traditionalists may not agree with you, but at least they will grant
that you are being consistent in your effort to understand the problem. If
the word "invasion" is being replaced by "migration" in order to placate the
chauvinists, then that is just a silly and useless compromise. If the word
"invasion" is being replaced by the word "migration" for solid linguistic,
textual and/or archaeological reasons, then please put your heads together
and cite examples that do not involve European aggression and violence upon
the rest of the world. If you can't do that, then don't label everyone who
points to the flaw in the analogy as a chauvinist. Some of us think with our
heads too, not just with our hearts.

Vidyasankar

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